Doing Business in Real Time
About this Blog:
The global economy has a life of its own, it lives in real-time, and we are all part of it. Hello brave new world.
Agile is Ready for the Enterprise
As the agile movement enters its second decade it is clearly ready for prime time
Call this the start of the agile decade. The fast pace of change and relentless competitive pressures mean companies need to continuously enhance existing products and services. Market leaders in every industry are winning new business with faster time to market for new products.
IT needs to deliver now because it is so central to everything business does. If CIOs want a seat at the table they need to be seen as the trusted and reliable partner of business. Agile is the best way to do that. It has been happening slowly as teams of developers started using agile on their own. Now their example and their success is driving enterprise adoption.
[ I do lively presentations on this and related topics - mhugos@yahoo.com ]
Vendors of Agile Products and Services See the Change
What is driving big companies to be agile? “They want to stop failing. The world is moving so fast now; they can’t keep doing the same old things” said Todd Olson, Director of Product Marketing from Rally Software, a company that makes one of the more popular agile project management tools. These are times that call for something different. Because IT is central to every business operation now, CIOs need to show that they are people who can be counted on to deliver what their companies need.
Vendors report that they see their sales cycle changing. They are calling on people higher up in the enterprise. These people are feeling the pressure to deliver results and they feel the pain when they don’t deliver. Robert Holler CEO of VersionOne, maker of another widely used suite of agile project management tools, said, “It will be a long implementation cycle but we see it happening. The tools are there to allow for reporting, transparency and metrics so execs can see what’s happening and not feel that things are out of control.”
Roshan Uttangi, a practice partner and certified agile coach at Wipro Consulting Services, a division of Wipro Limited, said that in the last 18 months 60 – 70 percent of the RFPs they get have requirements that agile techniques are well suited to address. These are things such as faster time to market and better coordination between IT and business. And often now customers just come right out and say they want to learn to be agile.
Scott Ambler, a highly respected agile thought leader and process expert with IBM said, “Agile is here to stay. It might get beat up by proponents of other methods, but that’s just human nature to challenge things.” Scott reports he is working with Fortune 500 companies to start up their agile transformation projects. He starts by mentoring executives in basic agile principles and then moves on to introducing techniques for how to scale agile and how to apply agile to large complex projects.
How to Get Started
It’s important to respect the culture of an organization. Agile cannot just be imposed on an organization. Companies need to customize it so that it fits their culture. A good way to start is to map out agile principles and values and match them to the values and operating principles of a company and adjust the agile roll out plan as necessary.
When creating an agile rollout plan, it’s important to look at more than just the IT development organization. It also important to look at HR policy, and the IT operations and system administration group, and understand the company’s regulatory environment and the procedures it has put in place
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